A Learning Environment Focused on Practice and Policy

At the Institute, students in our Master of Public Administration and Master’s in International Policy and Development degrees share a common faculty, the same core courses, and a passion for policy and social justice. Students who choose to earn either degree will acquire the professional skills to lead social change and shape international development and policy.

All of the core courses and specializations are available to students in both degree programs. Students take classes across a broad range of disciplines.

Students work closely with faculty and advisors to select the degree that is most closely aligned to their career goals.

Both degrees share an emphasis on immersive learning, curriculum flexibility, teamwork, and strong engagement between theory and practice.

All students work frequently on real-world problems with external clients and learning partners, both within specific classes and through semester-long internships.

Core Course Work

Economics

Credits that provide a fundamental understanding of international economics. Sample courses:

Currencies, Capital Flows, and Financial Crises

International Trade: Policy and Practice

Development Economics

Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Applied Social Science Research Methods

Credits that focus on social science research. Sample courses:

Introduction to Policy and Data Analysis (required)

Introduction to Program Evaluation

Leading Capacity Development

Fieldwork and Reporting

Field Methods

Development Paradigms, Discourses, and Theories

Credits that focus on development, practice, and policy. Sample courses:

Politics of Development

Introduction to Conflict Resolution

Development, Theory, and Practice

Power, Social Change, and Organizations

Seminars and Applied Practice

Research seminars and applied practice course work focused on development knowledge and skills in relevant areas of policy careers. Sample courses:

Evaluation of Small Arms Reduction Programs

Global Economics and Environmental Governance

Trade and Development

Human Rights Protection: Strategic Practices

Policy Writing

Comparative Business-Government Relations

Electives

Electives by advisement build on your expertise in areas that can benefit your career.

Migration, Trafficking, and Human Security

Analyze trends and patterns in international migration, including human trafficking and associated challenges to human security

Understand the domestic and international regimes that manage migration flows

Learn to develop and advocate for policies to protect migrants’ rights and improve social and economic conditions

Gain professional skills to pursue careers in international organizations, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), advocacy groups, state agencies, and research institutes dealing with migration

Global Poverty and Inequality

Apply a range of tools from economics, international relations, data analysis, and political economy to address problems of poverty and inequality

Study dimensions of poverty and inequality, including income, assets, gender, service access, and more

Design and evaluate regional and national policies, and explore issues calling for international cooperation and global governance initiatives

Engage in serious and sustained inquiry into poverty across differing regions to develop plans to address it

Gain professional skills to pursue careers in the private sector, government, or NGOs doing consulting, management, and research

Human Rights, Gender, and Identity

Explore worldwide issues of human rights, women’s rights, and identity, and how global agendas are implemented in diverse cultural contexts and integrated into development policies and practice

Examine topics such as women’s participation in decision making in post-conflict states, sexuality and violence against women, the role of men and masculinities, girls’ access to education, and advocacy for human rights

Learn how ethnic, religious, national, and gender identities are shaped by dominant power interests through everyday interactions, and how they play a role in conflict and turning the other into an enemy

Gain professional skills to pursue positions as gender analysts, program officers, and trainers, as well as policy analysts and researchers at organizations promoting human rights/women’s human rights, social inclusion, and the integration of gender equity

Conflict Resolution and Social Justice

Explore how conflict interveners aim to minimize the destructive effects of conflict while using it as a vehicle to transform relationships and oppressive structures

Reflect on personal ethics when dealing with social challenges such as migration, refugees, poverty, insecurity, discrimination, human rights violations, and environmental crisis

Gain professional skills to pursue jobs at the grassroots level (community organizations, NGOs), the institutional level (international NGOs, research organizations, think tanks), and policy institutions (UN, World Bank, other major international organizations)

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Design

Learn commonly applied techniques for determining the worth and value of initiatives at the policy, program, and project levels

Explore the analytical function of transforming information into data and data into actionable knowledge

Gain professional skills to work as project, program, or policy evaluators and designers in a range of fields with nongovernmental organizations, governments, and UN agencies

Financial Crime Management

The 16-credit Financial Crime Management specialization is available to students in any degree program. It addresses the growing market need for professionals to prevent, detect, and manage illicit finance.

Intercultural Competence

The 16-credit Intercultural Competence (ICC) specialization is available to students in any degree program. It equips you with the essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes to expertly lead and train multicultural teams, sensitively interact with diverse stakeholders, and create effective ICC assessments and training materials.

Professional Practicum

Put theory into practice through a semester-long practicum in the field or through a capstone research course:

International Professional Service Semester

An immersive learning experience, the International Professional Service Semester integrates academic work with professional opportunities. Students serve as junior professional staff members in an international organization while producing specific deliverables for academic credit.

Frontier Market Scouts

The Frontier Market Scouts fellowship program selects and trains students and professionals seeking careers in social venture management and impact investing. Two weeks of training is followed by a two- to 12-month field placement. To choose the fellowship program for your practicum, you must apply for admission to the program and complete the fieldwork, including an impact research report.

Practicum Project Seminar

This four-credit Practicum Project Seminar helps students demonstrate, integrate, and apply competencies central to their degrees. The course is designed to support customized projects depending on your interests and career aspirations. You are required to produce high-quality deliverables related to the issues you explore, either with client organizations or in non-client-based research projects.

Independent Practicum

The independent practicum (four to six credits) is self-directed and requires independent academic planning and responsibilities. You can choose to complete an internship or field-based research. Both require you to engage a faculty sponsor, develop a work plan with that sponsor, submit specified deliverables to be evaluated at the conclusion of the project, and present the deliverables in a final colloquium.

Sprintensive

Sprintensive is a pedagogical approach that is all about hands-on learning. It is relationship-rich and feedback-rich and involves a great deal of peer-to-peer and faculty-student interaction. Students take one class at a time, four hours a day, five days a week, covering an entire semester’s worth of material in just three weeks. The process is repeated three more times, so by the end of the semester students complete a full academic load, one class at a time. Focusing on a single subject offers many advantages. In addition to reducing the distractions and competing priorities of a standard schedule, the intensive schedule ensures that the student cohort develop deep and lasting bonds that translate into a vibrant professional support network.

Internships/Study Abroad

Gaining professional development experience during the course of your academic program is essential. The Institute helps support student opportunities to apply their skills, build their résumés, expand their connections, and advance their international careers through innovative real-world learning experiences.